Saint Therese of Lisieux
The Little Flower of Jesus
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The Little Way of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
The Lord gave Thérèse special gifts. He truly took over as Novice-Master. The easiest and most normal path for anyone to follow, in a situation such as she found herself, would have been to either hold in the hurts and anger she felt or lash out at her attackers. In either case, it would have made for a very bitter Sister, and the evil one would have had his way.
Jesus gave Thérèse a special secret, an insight, which became known as the Little Way of St. Thérèse. It was to turn all negatives into positives, to offer all her hurts to Jesus for the conversion of sinners, Priestly vocations, and the success of the missions. For example:
There was a sister who disliked her thoroughly and made every effort to cut her, whenever they would meet. Thérèse’s initial reaction was to give this sister a wide berth, avoid her wherever possible. She walked long distances out of her way not to confront this sister. But then, she decided that a good way to offer her sufferings to Jesus was to go out of her way to meet this sister. When the sister insulted her, as Thérèse knew she would, our little Saint would only smile.
During meditation in the Chapel, an old Nun prayed the rosary, noisily. She made sshshing noises as she prayed. This drove our little Saint up the wall. She dreaded when this sister would come in, because it always broke her concentration. As a special gift to Jesus, she offered this trial to Him. She got to the point where she looked forward to this Nun’s coming into the Chapel, so that she could have this little gift to give to her Lord. She came to love this Sister. When the little old Nun died, Thérèse was sad at having lost her.
Thérèse had a very sensitive stomach. She was used to eating the best food, prepared in a very appetizing way. Under the best conditions, Convent food never approached the quality she had been used to at Les Buissonnets. But there were times when food was prepared that none of the Sisters could bear. At these times, the cook would say, “We can give it to Thérèse. She’ll eat anything!”
It goes on and on. For the rest of her life, she practiced this little way. And nobody ever knew about it. She kept it a secret even from her sisters. She once wrote,
“Perhaps it would have relieved my feelings a bit if other people had been conscious of it, but they weren’t. There’ll be a lot of surprises at the Last Judgment, when we shall be able to see what really happened inside people’s souls; and I think this way of suffering by which God led me will be a revelation to the people who knew me.”
Abandonment became the key word of her Religious Life. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes Abandonment as follows:
“It refers specifically to the first stage of the progression of the soul toward union with God whereby futility is found in all other than God.
. . . it involves a passive purification of the soul through willingly undergoing trials and sufferings and leads to a surrender of natural consolations . . .”
In an effort to practice her little way of abandonment, she constantly had to fight off the desires of her sisters to baby her and give her special treatment as they had done at home in Les Buissonnets. She had to go out of her way to avoid them, so as not to allow them to spoil her as they had done since she was an infant. The most difficult sister to avoid was her second mother, Pauline, Sister Agnes.
She had always loved Pauline. Early in her postulancy, she and Pauline were to work together in the refectory, or dining room. Pauline talked incessantly about matters of interest to both of them, family matters. Little Thérèse prayed silently, so as not to hear her. Pauline was hurt by this, but finally came to understand. At one point, Thérèse had to shock her sisters, whom she loved so much, by telling them “I have come here for Jesus, not for you.”
She buried herself in this new way of life. She tried to become so small, so unnoticed, almost a part of the woodwork. She submerged her personality as much as she could. Her unspoken motto was “No one must know, except Jesus.”
“Yes, I want to be forgotten, not only by creatures, but also by myself. I’d like to be so reduced to nothingness, that I have no desire. The Glory of my Jesus, that is all; as for my own, I abandon it to Him; and if He seems to forget me, well, He is free since I am no longer mine, but His. He will grow weary of making me wait, quicker than I of waiting for Him!”
She aspired to Sainthood. Actually, she knew she would be a Saint. But she felt she had to do something. Her little way became her something, that which would bring her into the Communion of Saints, the inner circle of Jesus, the place where she wanted to be.
She was given Scripture passages which affirmed this.
“If anyone is a very little one let him come to me.” (Prov 9:4)
“As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; you shall be carried at my breast and fondled in my lap!” (Isaiah 66:12-13)
And, of course, her most favorite scripture passage was the one which the Church gave to her for her feast day, that of (Matthew 19:13).
“Let the little children to come unto me. Do not hinder them. The kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”
Thérèse must have known things that she did not share with her sisters except in a roundabout way. Thérèse truly believed that she would die young. After the death of her father in the summer of 1894, she talked about death often. While it’s true that she had always suffered bad health, and her respiratory problems began to surface about this time, there’s more to it than that. In a letter to Céline towards the end of 1894, she stated, “...If I die before you, do not think that I will be far from your soul...” and then almost as an afterthought, she wrote: “But above all, do not be alarmed, I am not ill.”
We know that she had a special kinship with Joan of Arc. Joan died young. Thérèse wrote, directed and starred in two plays about Joan of Arc. It appears that she used these plays to expound her own spirituality. She used passages from Scripture in these plays referring to early death,
“But the just man, though he die early, shall be at rest... Having become perfect in a short while, he reached the fullness of a long career; for his soul was pleasing to the Lord.” (Wisdom)
Towards the end of the play, Thérèse put these words into the mouth of Joan of Arc,
“Lord, I accept martyrdom for love of you, I no longer cringe from death or fire.
O Jesus how my soul craves for you; to see you, my God, is my one desire.
All I want is to die for your love,
I want to die to begin to live, to die to be with Jesus above.”
A time would come and not be long in the coming, when these words could very easily be attributed to Thérèse talking about herself.